


Who Could Stay

by izloveshorses



Category: Anastasia (1997), Anastasia - Flaherty/Ahrens/McNally
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, One Shot, dmitry wears cable knit sweaters!!!, idk how to tag this can u tell, living my Pacific Northwest dreams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:47:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23051923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/izloveshorses/pseuds/izloveshorses
Summary: A decade after fleeing to Paris instead of facing the trauma of her family's deaths, Anya's grandmother dies suddenly and she has to rush back home to settle everything. Now the sole heiress of the Romanov fortune, she can't seem to come to peace with the responsibilities and the untouched grief.Until Dmitry knocks on her door.
Relationships: Dimitri | Dmitry/Anya | Anastasia Romanov (Anastasia 1997 & Broadway)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 75





	Who Could Stay

**Author's Note:**

> This is 100% me processing random feelings and zero % research so have fun

Anya could never avoid tragedy, it seemed, no matter how far she traveled.

After her entire family was killed in a boating accident in the Pacific, she was sent to live with her grandmother, and a year later she decided to study in Paris. She said it was so she could learn from the best— which was half the truth— but maybe she was just running away from the grief that would inevitably consume her.

It never came though. Ten years later, when she was in the middle of preparing for another gallery exhibition, she received news that her grandmother had just passed away. She raced back to Washington to settle everything.

The funeral was numbing. Anya felt she should’ve been weeping, but the only thing in her heart was this cold nothingness that hadn’t resurfaced since she had to bury her parents and four siblings. Except this time, she didn’t have a hand to hold or anyone to sit next to. 

She did see one familiar face, though— one more interesting than the hundreds of investors and clients and business associates who kept crowding her. She’d recognize that head of brown hair anywhere. She’d spent her entire childhood hating the son of the family chef, and now she figured he was probably the only one who actually understood what she was (not) feeling, since his father had died when they were teenagers. But there were too many people between her and him offering her their condolences so she couldn’t meander through to greet him before he disappeared.

The reading of the will was worse. Nanna had inherited everything her family had owned, and since Anya was the only living Romanov left, she was the sole heiress of all of it.

The house. The boat that killed her family (somehow it’d survived when everyone that mattered to her hadn’t). The medical equipment developing business. The assets— lawyers, accountants, anyone she could possibly think of. It was overwhelming.

Walking up the long gravel driveway and through the tall, menacing, mahogany doors for the first time in over a decade was like entering a dream. Her Nanna hadn’t changed a single thing from what she remembered. Everything was coated in dust, untouched, unremembered. She clutched her coat and made her way through each room. Her father’s study, bookshelves filled to the brim. The dining room, candlesticks unlit. All the various lounges and living rooms, plush furnishings too delicate to sit in, paintings and mirrors framed in gold lining the walls. Magnificent windows behind thick curtains. She couldn’t bring herself to enter the untouched bedrooms upstairs. 

She explored the grounds, which were a lot less suffocating than inside, the sea breeze making her hair flutter behind her. Trees stood solid for acre after acre. She felt oddly comforted by their permanence. 

The only bedroom she was able to enter was her own, or rather the bedroom of the person she used to be. She almost felt like the memories— echoes of laughter, watching her sisters dance in and out of the room, braiding each other's hair— belonged to a stranger. Or a ghost. 

The house was too big, too quiet, too terrifying. Over the next few days Anya ignored every phone call because answering them meant she knew what she was planning to do. Which she didn’t.

Lily was calling about the business. She’d been acting manager since her Nanna had fallen ill and was probably wondering when Anya would take over. The thought was terrifying so she simply said she wasn’t sure yet and didn’t answer again. The rest of the calls were from the various lawyers and landscapers and whatever she was now in charge of. 

It was like a cage. She felt imprisoned by her own past, by her family’s dying wishes. 

None of this was what she wanted. She didn’t want to be the CEO of a business that developed medical equipment, she didn’t want to live in this enormous house, she wanted to run an art gallery in Paris. But now she was living for everyone who’d died before her. Her life was no longer her own. How do you honor the dead while still wanting to live?

* * *

After a week or so, Anya had settled into a rhythm. She still hadn’t talked to anyone— not that there were many people willing to talk to her about things other than her family’s business. But she was eating and exercising and avoiding the bedrooms.

One crisp morning she heard a knock on the door while she was eating a bowl of cereal. She felt bad for wasting a fully stocked kitchen on processed foods, but she wasn’t up for cooking. 

Dmitry Sudayev, the son of the chef whose food she grew up eating, was standing at the front porch.

“Anya?” he breathed. He was the only one who’d ever called her that back then.

“Dmitry!” she nearly jumped into his arms. He huffed in surprise. She didn’t blame him, they never really ever got along. But it was so _good_ to see someone from her childhood that was still breathing, and he awkwardly patted her back before she pulled away. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

At the same he had. He was a full head taller than her now, broadened shoulders filling a tattered knit sweater, his smile not as wild— but still boyish as ever. 

He laughed. That certainly hadn’t changed either. “How was Paris?”

Right. Paris. The reason she’d been gone for ten years. “A dream.”

“Uh,” he held out a brown paper bag. “I brought you something.” She opened it and the smell of cinnamon hit her before she realized what it was, and her heart swelled— the smell alone felt more like home than this house ever would. “I figured you’d want an old favorite, it’s not much, but—”

She looked at him again, surprised at how happy she felt, “Thank you.”

He rubbed his neck. “If you need anything, I’m still in the house by the docks,” he pointed towards the shore.

So, he hadn’t left. Perhaps he was as permanent as the trees surrounding the estate. “It’s good to see you,” she said, and she meant it. He started to walk away when she blurted, “You could stay, if you want.” He stopped halfway down the steps to look at her. “To catch up. It’s been a while.”

His brow softened. “I have to go to work.”

“Oh.” Why was she so disappointed? Maybe she was more lonely than she thought.

“But I can make dinner another night this week?” 

She bit her lip to suppress a grin. “I’d like that.”

He smiled and walked down the gravel driveway, running his fingers through his hair. He didn’t drive here, but he didn’t need to, since the cook’s house was on the estate’s grounds. She watched him until he disappeared behind the trees.

* * *

Anya tried continuing her job remotely. She’d go sit at the local cafe with her laptop, replying to an endless list of emails, answering skype calls, and making sure the gallery’s website was running smoothly, but it wasn’t the same. She wanted to be _there_ where she was needed, but she had to figure out what to do with all of this wealth and property first. 

Not to mention the intolerable pitying glances from strangers. Small towns were charming until you had to deal with strangers knowing everything about your life.

If she weren’t visiting Dmitry a couple times a week, she’d be a complete recluse. When she arrived home from “working,” she found another paper bag on the front porch with a full meal prepared and a note stapled to the top: _Dinner tomorrow? Bring wine._

He worked at the docks now but still cooked his father’s recipes regularly. A greyhound greeted her every time she knocked on the door. His little cottage was cozy and welcoming, not at all the shrine to his father she’d expected, so she spent a lot of time there. He didn’t seem to mind. She envied him a little that his home had become his own, that he was free to live and decorate as he chose. She wondered if she’d ever feel that way. Still, she looked forward to those dinners. He was the only thing familiar to her that was still alive and breathing. He was mostly the same as she'd remembered, but had lost that teenage angst and innocence all at once, not as angry with his lot in life anymore, but still hardened by all that he'd lost. He was the only one she felt she could talk with about those losses. Most of the time she walked across the grounds by herself to him, but sometimes, when she insisted that he was never an intrusion, he’d pick her up and walk with her, pine needles crunching underneath their feet.

They talked about their childhoods. How they were _constantly_ getting each other into trouble. Anya didn’t remember when the rivalry started but she’d been determined to ruin his life, and he’d retaliated. The destruction they’d caused escalated so much that they were forbidden to spend any time together (a rule they’d both ignored, of course). It was nice, remembering a time when her biggest problem was the boy who never left her alone.

She’d never forget the day his father died. After she heard the news she’d found him huddled in one of their hiding places in the library, his bony knees pulled to his chest. Wordlessly, she sat with him, leaving a cinnamon apple tarte between them for him to eat. Their rivalry and games seemed so silly and stupid in that moment. It was sobering, growing up in the span of a day.

Their whole relationship shifted that day. Anya no longer felt the need to tease him, and he never had a reason to retaliate. The day her family died he found her in the same spot and brought the same dessert. 

Everything had changed since then. But at the same time, nothing had changed at all.

At the end of the evening, she’d always thank him for cooking, and he’d always thank her for coming. She’d pat the dog’s head on her way out, and when she’d look back, she’d see him through her foggy breath in the chilly air leaning against the door, an unreadable expression on his face.

* * *

The Washington air crispened with time, reminding Anya that change was inevitable. But she still hadn’t figured out what to do.

She’d left almost every room in the house untouched, terrified of messing up whatever preserved her family’s presence. But the dust was in her lungs and she couldn’t take the drowning anymore.

One night, she’d wandered into the drawing room, and was overwhelmed with memories. Not of events, but of emotions. The bitterness she felt when her family died— no, had left her. The numbness was gone and replaced by an irrational rage aimed at every piece of value in this room. Everything became a symbol of what she’d inherited, of the life they expected her to live instead of the one she built for herself, of everything they left behind. 

She threw knicknacks at the wall. Tore the ugly and expensive curtains from their rods above the windows. Yanked a shelf from the wall and smashed the china cabinet. None of it satisfied her anger, but each crash and shatter fueled it, and because this was the most she’d felt in a long time, she kept going. She screamed and knocked the china cabinet to the ground. A clatter of metal instead of porcelain made her stop and catch her breath, a flash of gold catching her eye. She dropped the plank of wood. Glass crunched underneath her shoes when she picked up what had caught her attention— a little circular music box that fit in her palm. She opened it, two ceramic dancers greeting her, and she twisted the mechanism at the bottom. Her breath hitched when music started to play.

“Anya?” She didn’t hear Dmitry enter the house or the room. It was dinner night, she’d forgotten. “Oh, God—” He knelt next to her slowly, as if she were a wounded animal. 

Neither of them said anything until the song ended. She set the music box on the ground while she watched the dancers spin around, mesmerized by the simplicity of their movements, at how careless and unaware they were of how many memories they held. 

“My Nanna gave this to me when I was little,” she whispered. “It was our secret. I wasn’t supposed to tell any of my sisters or my brother because she hadn’t gotten them anything on her trip. But I—” she startled herself by letting out a sob, “I’d give anything to tell them my secrets now.”

Her numbness from the past few weeks— or decade, really— had been replaced by rage. But when her rage simmered and died, only the grief she’d been avoiding remained. It surged out of her like a raging storm. Waves of sobs crashed through her body, she felt like the shore outside, the walls bursted by this flood of emotions. Dmitry’s arms anchored her to reality.

“Why did they leave me?” She sobbed into his sweater. “Why am I alone?” He held her tighter but she kept asking him questions she knew he wouldn’t be able to answer. “Why aren’t they here?”

 _“I’m_ here,” he whispered, “I’m not going anywhere, okay?” 

She didn’t know how long they sat on that floor in each other’s arms, him whispering comforting words and rubbing his hands on her back, surrounded by shattered glass, but perhaps for the first time, she realized she might eventually be okay.

* * *

Anya called Lily the next day and asked to meet for coffee. 

After crying together about her grandmother and the rest of her family, Anya felt a connection she hadn’t realized she’d been longing for. Someone to grieve with. Then she explained why she hadn’t come into the office yet. She opened up about feeling inadequate and unworthy to take on a business that’d helped so many people, about the impossibility of filling the shoes of people as wonderful as her family, about not even wanting this life for herself anyway. She wasn’t saying no, but she needed more time to think about it. Of course Lily understood and said not to worry about it.

One by one, Anya began organizing and cleaning the rooms. Ten years was long enough for them to sit in disuse. She invited Lily over to go through some of the rooms with her, tearing up at certain photos or other items with memories. Soon they decided to enlist the help of Dmitry and then Lily’s husband, Vlad, who was good at pricing things and making them laugh.

And Dmitry. Well. She was honestly a little embarrassed about her episode the other night, but he never mentioned it. That night he’d cleaned up the broken glass and porcelain that littered the ground after he'd carried her to bed. He was full of good deeds, never asking for anything in return.

One night, during one of their dinners, she asked to go on a date. This was lovely, she said, but she wanted to go _out._ He said he’d make it count.

So that weekend she let him hold her hand as they walked along the pier after their dinner in town, laughing and talking about nothing. It was too cold for ice cream but they got some anyway and raced back to the warmth of his cottage. She let herself stand on her tiptoes to kiss him as they slow-danced in the silent kitchen— why had she waited this long?-- tentative at first, then she shoved him against the wall, and he lifted her up as they stumbled down the hallway. After landing in a tangle of limbs and giggles on his bed she let him confess between kisses that he’d been in love with her since before she left for Paris. Why didn’t you tell me, she asked, and he said he didn’t want to stop her from following her dream. And when she asked why he hadn’t said anything sooner, he said he didn't want her to think he was trying to take advantage of a grieving woman. She carded her fingers through his hair. Maybe she was in love with him, too. Maybe she had been for a while.

“Can I ask you something?” he breathed later while lazily running his fingers up and down her bare back, moonlight dancing through his messy hair, thoroughly loved.

She was tracing the muscles on his stomach. “Anything.”

“You’re not using me as a distraction, right?” He huffed a laugh, but she could see a glimmer of doubt in his eyes and it broke her heart. “Am I gonna wake up tomorrow and this will all be over?”

She climbed up his chest to kiss him again. “You’re stuck with me, Dmitry Sudayev.”

He grinned against her lips. “Good.”

* * *

The next morning Anya pulled over her head the sweater Dmitry had discarded to the floor last night (the sleeves came long past her fingertips and the hem came down to her thighs, she felt cozy and loved and delighted) and found him making breakfast. Good, she was getting tired of eating cereal every day. She greeted him by wrapping her arms around his waist and kissing the dip in his back between his shoulder blades. She could feel the content sigh more than she could hear it.

Over pancakes, they discussed what she should do about the house. She was still glowing from last night but this was on her mind and there was no one else she wanted to talk about it with.

“You don’t owe them, Anya,” he said in between bites. “They loved you unconditionally and you loved them. And that’s enough.”

“I know,” she sighed. “I just think I need to honor them somehow. But I don’t think I can do that in the way they wanted.”

“Maybe the best way to honor them is to take ownership of your life.” He suggested. “Use what they gave you to do something you love.”

For the first time since arriving home, she finally had clarity, and he shrugged as if he didn’t just solve what had been tormenting her for months now. She kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you, Dima.”

Later, during her weekly afternoon coffee date with Lily, Anya told her she was transferring the business to her. It was only fair, after all, since Lily had been running the whole thing for almost a year now anyway. Lily wept and said she’d be honored.

The first thing she sold was that stupid boat. Dmitry had maintained it because it was his job, but he said he hated that thing and they were all glad to see it go. They finished going through the house. Anya organized an auction of most of the stuff inside, save for a few sentimental belongings that were really only valuable to her and her family, and used the money raised to convert the house into an orphanage (Dmitry cried when she told him this part of her plan).

She quit her job in Paris, as much as she loved it. In order to work while keeping an eye on the early stages of the orphanage before passing management onto someone more qualified, she opened a gallery in town, attracting local artists and collectors from nearby. It was busy and productive and she hadn’t realized how much she missed working.

She never stopped missing her family. The pain dulled with time but it was still bubbling underneath the surface. Instead of running away from her grief this time, she let it wash over her, and her new family would be there to anchor her to shore.

“What would you like to do?” She asked Dmitry one night. She still _technically_ lived at the big house, but had taken up residence in his cottage while hers was being worked on in preparation for the children who’d live there. “I’m still quite rich, you know.”

He laughed and wrapped his arms around her. “I’m good with this.”

“Are you sure?” He bumped her nose and she giggled. “Because I was thinking we could take a vacation. I could show you my favorite spots in Europe?”

“Oh?” He raised his eyebrows and grinned. “That actually sounds nice.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he kissed her forehead. “Maybe when we get back we can talk about us. Our future.”

Anya waited for the fear and dread to settle in, the terror of the past or the uncertainty of what was to come coming back to consume her. But all she felt was hope. “I’d like that.”


End file.
